Azzurri Communications Ltd
27 01 2007Azzurri Communications are revolutionising teaching and learning by providing unique and practical educational technology.
Azzurri provides both hardware and software solutions designed specifically for education.
Azzurri has a proven track record of providing practical, robust, flexible and innovative ICT environments through a consultative approach. Its service offering includes:
- TALMOS Learning Platform
- Managed services for schools
- ICT hardware solutions
- Infrastructure
- Interactive technologies
- Telephone systems
- Security solutions
- Broadband internet service provision
- Internet safety and email
- Wide area network management.
As a participating company on the Becta Learning Platform Services Framework, Azzurri provides a coherent learning platform to deliver the Government’s vision for personalised learning.
Azzurri is one of only a handful of companies to achieve the Becta Accreditation for Laptops for Teachers, Interactive Technologies and Internet Safety and is also a supplier to the Infrastructure Services and Learning Platform Services Frameworks.
We have developed a proven record of supporting UK education and meeting the best value requirements.
I was at a presentation of the TALMOS system today. The presentation went on for over an hour and a half and the system is pretty comprehensive especially on the MIS integration side, as one would expect. We were told that TALMOS is active in over 110 schools, federations and local authorities which didn’t seem like many schools to me considering the resources behind TALMOS. A package of training and implementation comes with the LP and this was viewed with interest by the people at the meeting, seen as a useful thing. The alliance with Britannica resources made it all the more interesting (not sure why - I often wonder if teachers in Shropshire know that the library service provides free access to Xrefer from a Shropshire IP address).
One thing was missing though and it nagged at me for a while before I realised what it was. We’d seen the front page portal (”any colour you like as long as it’s blue and orange, or orange. And blue”) which failed how to impres. We saw how TALMOS interacted with all those nice SIMS modules like Assessment Manager, feeding information both ways to and from TALMOS; why were people so impressed by the electronic registration capability? We were dazzled by setting up resources for learners to use, so that learners can work in courses and (I liked this) teachers can assign particular resources to individuals (personalisation ticked off).
But.
In all that time, I really didn’t get a feel for the learner’s experience. I mean, this isn’t a tool to bash learning into them is it? Are we intending for the system to be a tool to catch them out when they don’t do their homework, or do we want it to be something that encourages them to do their homework and extra learning besides? Why should the learning stop at the exercises that I’ve set them to do tonight? If the resources and the approach are exciting, relevant and useful the learners will break your door down to get to them.
I felt it a bit strange that all the attention in this meeting was on the administration side of the system rather than the benefits it gave to the learners’ experience. I saw a couple of quasi-powerpoint pages with a mildly entertaining (and soon irritating) embedded video, reached from a file structure that was as appealing as c:\windows/system32. Where were the resources in context? Where was the engaging collaborative activity? TALMOS does blogs and forums apparently but we didn’t get to see them.
To create interesting and engaging learning resources is what really serves the customers, driving the success of the learning platform. Anything else is secondary; your online markbook is useless if the learners won’t engage with the activities to fill it. Getting teachers to use a LP is one thing - always a struggle - but you know you’ve succeeded when the learners expect and demand it for their work. These are Digital Natives, after all.
(Will TALMOS give us a free trial for a while?)